A person’s personality is a very important aspect of a person’s overall “quality “. Under many circumstances, we need to describe a person’s personality to others. Have you ever hesitated on saying something about a person in Chinese because you’re unsure about what words to use?

Well, today we’ll spend some time on getting the keywords right on this Learn Chinese online blog. You’ll learn some expressions that you could reuse in your own conversation in Chinese.

The first two keywords I’d like to introduce are positive ones on personality : 诚实 chéng shí (honest), 稳重 wěn zhòng (calm)

If you wanna point out that someone is lack of the above good merits, you can express it with a soft tone like this:

The following two are also popular expressions about personality that you really should know: 有责任感 yǒu zérèngǎn (responsible ), 顾大局 gù dàjú (mature, sensible )

顾大局 gù dà jú comes from the phrase of “照顾大的局面 zhàogu dà de júmiàn“. Literally it means “taking care of the overall situation “. It actually indicates a person that is not just focus on small things and easily gets grumpy. On the contrary, one that has more awareness of the overall situation and is willing to contain minor dissatisfactions to oneself for the sake of the majority. It’s a symbol of maturity in Chinese culture (when you grow out of the whining kid that you used to be… :-)

开明 kāi míng (open-minded)，直爽 zhí shuǎng (straightforward ) are another two good merits that one should have, or try to have in today’world.

Both Chinese words are equivalent to their English translation, you should have no difficulty in understanding them. I found out that these two words are heavily used in English resumes to describes oneself’s personality.

To describe a person with very good social skills, you can use the following two expressions: 会做人 huì zuòrén (good at people relationships)，会来事儿 huì lái shìr rén ( good at socializing and connecting with people )